Archive for the ‘social media marketing’ Category

Generation Y, young, digital-savvy consumers, are the 18- to 34-year-old age group which has grown up with internet and social media. They communicate about product and services with their friends on social networks. They read and write online reviews and are more likely to recommend products.

They have higher wages and are more likely to spend their money on luxury goods as well.

A survey done by American Express Business Insights find out that Generation Y increased their spending 31% in 2011 over 2010.

Famous brands have discovered this trend and are more active their where Generation Y is around on the web. This is about B2C.

But how about B2B and what can they use this information for?

As Gen. Y goes older they will get more influential jobs and positions in companies and this is what makes them interesting for a B2B approach.

For you if you are in B2B, you should follow the examples of the big consumer and luxury brands and establish your outposts on the web and in social media.

As those Gen. Y users actually do not have influential positions they are an interesting community for you and your human resources to get new talent for now. This also gives you the opportunity to play

You should build a strong network all over the coming years, establish your business as a trusted and reputable source and grow awareness for your B2B activities.

This will let you enough time to learn their interests and to learn their way life, so you can speak their language when it comes to do business with them. This knowledge and the existing connections will make you business much easier within the next twenty years.

Your today’s activities will be your investment in your businesses future. In the first step you improve your human resources and get in touch with talent where they are around on the web and in social media. And for second you learn a lot about their interests and what they appreciate and what they do not like.

Infographic: WHO ARE THE MILLENNIALS?

Marketing takeaway tip: Improve you online presence by become active in social media. Start publishing valuable target content through a blog, video, eBooks, and whitepapers. Improve your website and make it a great marketing hub to communicate with your audience and to attract Gen. Y job seekers for your business.

Or How Mobile Devices will Make 90% of Your SEO Efforts Obsolete in the Future

In the past it has been important for a business to have good SEO in place to get found on the search engines through their target audience. Businesses optimized their websites and published content with keywords on a frequent basis.

In the last years content marketing has emerged and a new era began on how to manage it to get found from customers who research on search engines and than in social media. At this time buyer persona content creation is a must for businesses to increase their chances to get found on the web.

Companies need to spend enough diligence to identify their buyer personas because of to reach their lead generation goals. Smart content marketing is a critical factor to attract the right buyer personas to a company website and convert them to leads and during a lead nurturing process to revenue!

But a new way of search has emerged where some of these tactics above does not fit anymore. Mobile devices have spread around the world and statistics show that about 260 million devices are in use actually and this number will grow by 2014 to more than one billion.

When people are on their mobile device they do not go to the web browser to research for a restaurant or retail store.

They rely on their mobile apps from Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other which give them information instantly and also location based information where how to hit a great location. Also in the B2B sector more CEOs are researching for products and services on their IPads, IPhone; Blackberry and Android. This trend is increasingly growing.

Search traffic will decrease and companies who are active on location based services will get an increase of traffic as people use them preferable.

Consumer Trend in Mobile Purchases

2009-2010, % of consumers making 1 or more m-purchase

Source: Oracle / ATG

What does it mean for businesses?

For a business this means to get engaged on those social networks and services which already are very popular and have mobile apps active. This is the way to get and most important to stay in front of the future customers.

Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses earn their way to the customer, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.

Inbound marketing includes Blogging, Social Media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Most business has not the resources and the knowledge to execute a powerful and result driven inbound marketing strategy.

They have not good writers on their staff to produce buyer persona oriented remarkable content like blog articles, whitepapers, how-to’s and eBooks on a regular basis.

Also they do not have in-house SEO experts to help them to choose the most relevant keywords to better get found in the search engines.

Moreover the knowledge about social media communication and an effective community management is not in place as well.

But the most important fact is the time to get all the required things done.

Studies show that business who try to do inbound marketing without professional help fail within three months.

What did they win when the do not hire a professional inbound marketing agency? Simply nothing! They waste time resources and money for no revenue results.

If you want to profit from inbound marketing than you should think about to hire professionals who can do the job.

What do you get by executing a professional inbound marketing strategy?

A. S ave up to 62% of your marketing budget.

B. Stand out of your competition.

C. Generate a massive amount of leads.

D. Get up to 55% higher lead conversion rates.

E. Increase your customers and sales.

How much does it cost to hire a professional inbound marketing agency?

This is a god question. The same one like how much is a car? What kind of car do you want? Do you want an old car or a brand new Ferrari?

Inbound marketing hourly rates start with $100 per hour, depends what to do.

You can calculate to spend between $2,000/m – $3,000/m for about minimum of six months, depending on the services delivered. Because any serious inbound marketing agency will need this time frame to set your marketing on the right track to help you to reach your revenue goals.

On the end of the day is inbound marketing the most efficient and the most cost effective marketing you can get for your buck.

Social media is a great way to step into two way conversation with recent and future customers.

In these times it seems that everybody wants to step into social media.

In my opinion social Media is not for everybody! Why you will ask? And I will tell you from my point of view:

Social media marketing for small businesses can increase their brand awareness and reach massively. Everywhere in the net small businesses are trying to get a piece of the social media marketing pie and acting nervously to not get left behind.

My experiences are that most of them should better look to have a clear and good in time working email response first. Yep. I know that’s not nice of me.

But this is the simple painful truth. Most of them who are looking to step into social media conversation simply do not have their email conversation under control.

So how can they think to be successful in social media where they are required to answer in real time to profit from it, when they are not able to answer email requests within business hours?

Most online shops I have contacted need more than three hours to respond, some much longer and some do not answer anyway. But most of them are in social media. What a waste of time!

Imagine this, there is a future customer who has a question about a product he wants to buy, but he does not get any response in the worst case!

Social media success lives of real time communication, like in the real world. When you are on cocktail party and somebody asks you a question, than you can’t wait until tomorrow to answer. The same with social media!

Businesses which do not have their email communication under control and are not able to respond very quick, or better in real time, do not need to think about social media marketing yet. They better improve their email communication and when this is working well, in real time, than they can step into social media.

If you feel you have what it takes to step into social media marketing than here are several question for you to clear before you start:

- Ensure that your email communication is working and you do not produce angry prospects

- Is your email response time under one hour or better, than you can step into social media

- Who is responsible for email communication and social media conversation? You should have a minimum one person in charge of each one

- Do you have social media policy in place?

- What kind of content does your business publishes on regular basis on the web?

- Do you have goals set for lead generation through social media?

- What will be your activities to generate leads, do you have landing pages in place and how about a lead nurturing process to make paying customers out of your leads?

- Do you have set revenue goals for your social media marketing? If it does not bring in dollars than it makes no sense!

The influence of user generated content on purchase decisions is increasingly growing. Especially the digital natives 18 to 34 account for this trend where products and services are recommended to friends, business partners and family.

A Study from Bazaarvoice shows that today up to 51% of internet users purchase decision is influenced by user generated content. It is influenced by their social network, family and friends.

Today people research on the internet and in social media about a brand, products and services to get the best deal for their buck.

It is crucial for any brand to know what these future clients will find about them on the web. What kind of ratings on rating sites, product reviews in their network, the brands communication from a blog, video, social media, press, etc.

What will these future customers find when they research about your business. Can this information they find about your company influence them positively to buy your products? Or will they influence them to buy the products from your competitor?

On the web you are what you publish, what are you? — David Meerman Scott —

Brands need to follow the general principles of authenticity and transparency and they need to understand there is a huge group of consumers right now who just do not trust them. They need to be open and give their audience the opportunity to talk about their brand. This will become the standard to the long term.

What brands can do to step into brand talk:

- Be where your target audience is around

- Listen to the conversation

- Respond to the conversation

- Publish and share buyer persona relevant and remarkable content on the web and in social media

- Ask for opinion about your products and your business

- Ask for any suggestions for product and services improvement

- Be authentic, be honest and be helpful

- Keep the conversation on run

The most important point:START IMMEDIATELY before your competitor does! A later uphill battle will cost you much more and it is doubtful that you can overtake them.

All of the points above increases trust, credibility and reputation of your brand. This is the currency on the web! When you are smart and build your currency the right way than you can gain a massive competitive edge.

What are you actually doing to get seen and found on the web when your target audience is looking for products or services you also have to offer?

Do you utilize one or all of the above suggestions to improve your chances on the market? If not you should start right away! It’s a mouse click economy; your competitor is only a mouse-click away.

Social media has become a significant part of serious marketers lead generation strategy.

Companies who engage in social media increase their reach massively. And there is no matter if they are B2C or B2B.

Social media is public communications channel where companies can get great unfiltered feedback.

Companies need to understand that social media is not for “pushing your messages out “.

To be successful and to reach a positive ROI with social media, companies need to communicate and to listen to their audience.

It is simply untrue when someone claims that his customers are not active in social media. They are active in B2C and B2B and they research online for products and services.

The only question is: What will they find when they research for products and services you also have to offer, will they find you or your competitor?

Studies prove that B2C and B2B profit likewise from social media engagement.

A study from Wildfire Interactive shows that social media helps grow brand awareness, increase sales and partnerships and helped to reduce marketing costs.

Engaging in dialogue with customers via social media has become an important part of successful companies.

Smart marketers measure the value of social media channels as well. They want to know which one has the best results for their business. One of the most popular channels is Facebook. About 44% of surveyed marketers say that “Facebook is valuable because they help with new customer recruitment”.

Moreover they have stated that Facebook fans have higher conversion rates and they make more frequent purchases.

How can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing?

• At first you can do this by increase of your revenue

• As a second way you can measure are “Likes”

• You can measure social media mentions of your brand

A great way is to add lead capture pages to your in social published articles and to track the traffic, leads, lead to customer rate and revenue per generated lead. So you get a good picture of your cost per lead and adjust activities to increase your profits.

Studies show that companies which relying on online lead generation are two times more profitable than those who do not. Those companies achieve an up to 62% lower cost per lead.

Ok, here are two ways you can deal with this:

1. Place the cursor on your name at the top right corner of the screen. From the small

pull down menu that appears, select “settings”

2. Then click “Account” on the left/bottom

3. In the column next to Account, select the option “Manage Social Advertising”

4. Finally un-tick the box “LinkedIn may use my name and photo in social advertising”

5. and Save

Or, the Second possibility –You can use this as an opportunity to let market LinkedIn your business throughout their whole network for FREE! Simply let them do the branding job for your business and paying not a dime for this!

How does this sound for you?

Here is how it works:

You simply change your photo to a branding tool! Use your photo by inserting your brand LOGO how I have done here with my LinkedIn photo. That’s it.

Now LinkedIn is very welcome to use my photo throughout their whole network as long as they want.

I only can say THANK YOU LINKEDIN for this tremendous FREE marketing opportunity and God bless you!

By the way, you can do this on Twitter, Facebook and other networks as well.

In the beginning of the internet it was a source of information and today entertainment and shopping have accompanied this attitude. But research is still the main factor when it comes to web use.

Before social media people went mainly to search engines to research and to find products and services. Today in times of social media the products and services find them through discussions, content sharing and recommendations from friends and followers. And even on the road these information are accessible through mobile devices.

This evolution of information technology also arrived to the B2B companies.

The search volume on Facebook has overtaken Google. And there are not only consumers who research there. B2B is also using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and other social networks to research for products, services, industry related information and new business partners.

Nobody says that a product or service with a volume of hundreds of thousands of dollars has to be sold on Facebook. But the first contact can be made there and the further discussions and negotiations can be took offline to close the deal.

Social media is a great way to showcase a business and to offer a more personal insight view. A company has great opportunities to show personality to attract the right buyer persona and to get in touch with the right new future customer when this one is looking out for products and services.

All social media sites also have mobile apps; their reach also spreads wider and is working 24/7. Not only teenagers are surfing on social networks through their mobile devices. B2B decision makes do this as well and their number is increasing!

As businesses understand that social media is no short term sprint than more something like a marathon they engage with more diligence to plan their steps to reach a long term ROI.

Successful brands look at social media engagement as a plant which needs to be cultivated over the time to grow to an unlimited range.

BzzAgent has discovered that about 61% of brand advocates would buy products up to one year after social media campaign has expired. This proves that social media marketing and two way communication lasts longer than ordinary one marketing blasts from yesteryear.

This does not mean that social media has become a “push the button cash machine”. Not every campaign will be successful. But like everything on the planet the volume of activities and their step by step improvement ensures a growing success.

This does not mean that brands should fire one campaign behind another. This means that a brand should carefully listen to its audience. When they listen carefully their audience will tell them which campaign could be appreciated to become a possible success story.

In the mean time a human and authentic communication should be the priority.

A good way to start a smart dialogue is to ask open questions. To ask the audience about their opinion about services and products will open discussions where a brand get the opportunity to respond in a professional, authentic and human way.

No matter if there are critics or praise. Every feedback is a chance to showcase the brands standpoint and get in touch with the recent or future customer.

Brands that listen to their audience and improve products and services to fit their audience’s needs are one step from that to be the long term winners. The growing trend for custom products proves this. The one size fits all strategy does not work anymore this is for sure!

Any business can use social media as a source of unfiltered information and as powerful business intelligence tool to predict trends, for support and product development.

The others who do not will be left behind, and they deserve to vanish because they do not care a shi* about their audience and never have. Social media also points this out and separates the good from the bad once.

In this new world the customer B2C and B2B wins and the brands who care. And that’s good!

Google, Yahoo and Bing increasingly include results from social media discussions in their search results. Especially Google+ results are likely more visible on Google results pages. Bing favors Facebook and also search results on Facebook are also from Bing too.

But how to get into those results the smartest way?

The easiest way to get better found on search engines is content marketing. As content marketing has become the most powerful marketing strategy to increase brand awareness, trust and credibility with the audience.

As content is only a part of an integral marketing strategy there is more part of the marketing puzzle important to be used.

The most powerful internet marketing strategy which also has proven to be successful and to bring guaranteed results for businesses is Inbound Marketing.

Inbound marketing consist of content creation like Blogging, Social Media Marketing, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Inbound Marketing has proven to:

• Save up to 62% of a businesses marketing budget.

• Make a business stand out of their competition.

• Help to generate a massive amount of leads with up to 55% higher lead conversion rates

• Increase customers, sales and revenue.

Content creation

Content Marketing has become a significant part of online marketing strategy. Content marketing has proven to be the best and most cost effective way to drive traffic to a company website and convert this traffic to leads and customers.

The most popular ways of content marketing are blogging, social media and video. Studies show that 57% of companies which operate a corporate blog get customers through their blogging effort!

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing has become a powerful tool to spread remarkable content to reach a wide audience.

For companies who engage in social media and show presence in these channels can open wide opportunities to get in touch with their audience. This leads to an increase of credibility and unfiltered feedback of the target audience and can lead to an improvement of products and services.

New studies show that up to 65 percent of today’s consumers expect a brand to listen and to respond on questions, comments and complaints in social media. Studies also show that companies which use social media actively to communicate with their audience are more successful than companies who do not.

Lead Generation

Inbound marketing has a 62% lower cost per lead than traditional marketing strategies. Inbound marketing way generated leads have a 55% higher lead conversion rate than lead generated through traditional marketing strategies.

Lead Nurturing – Lead Conversion

Effective lead nurturing increases lead conversion by up to 55%. Which does not mean that lead nurturing consist of sales pitches. Moreover effective lead nurturing is also a communication process with the future client in which the lead receives helpful and valuable information too. This grows the trust and increases the chances that a lead buys when he is ready to do so, because he knows the source as a trusted and reputable one.

Closed-Loop Analysis

All marketing tasks need to be measured to ensure you are walking the right way. During this closed loop analysis you increase successful tasks measure, improve and repeat. This ensures a step by step quality increase and a gradually decrease of marketing costs up to 62%.

Infographic: Content creation

Keep your inbound marketing flexible to react on real-time news! Always keep the news in focus. As news appears they can offer a tremendous opportunity for you to jump on this bandwagon to use it as your own marketing push the piggy pack way! But you must react quickly, in real-time!

Simply be the first who tweets, shares or likes the story and also take into account to write a blog article from your point of view ASAP! This can help to increase your brand awareness.

In the past years eBay is an established platform to buy and sell goods. Millions of people day visit eBay to research and to buy products. Hundreds of thousands of businesses utilize eBay to get new customers and to make revenue.

But there is another side of eBay. Increasing fraud, increasing sales and listing fees and the decreasing image value of eBay.

But there is good news for businesses. Ebay is a traffic machine when it comes to target traffic. Moreover the eBay traffic is laser target.

How can you use eBay to lead a ton of laser target traffic to your business? Because this is the only way how you can profit from eBay in the long term, when you build your brand not theirs!

Here are eight easy steps how you can squeeze out eBay traffic and increase YOUR profits:

First: You should change your mind and not use eBay of your primary source of business. This decreases your sales and listing fees and focuses your audience to your website and the listed offers.

Second: When you are listing your offers on eBay you should ALLWAYS include your website and your blog URL in to your listing, so your audience get the chance to visit your website.

Third: Only list offers on eBay as special offers, do not list them in your website and shop at the same time, so the visitors can’t compare. Use eBay to introduce new products for a short time and then only offer them in your shop.

Fourth: Design your website and shop in greater marketing strategy in mind and build it as marketing hub to canalize your traffic to leads and your leads to sales.

Fifth: Build your own email list to keep your audience updated. Include a call to action to your audience to subscribe to your newsletter on your website, so you own your list.

Sixth: Setup a lead nurturing process to keep your audience informed, but do not bother them only with sales offers. This leads to higher unsubscribe rates.

Seventh: Start a corporate blog to open a two way conversation hub for your audience to build trust, position yourself as a credible source and to publish remarkable content.

Eighth: Start a facebook business page and add Facebook special, especially for your FB fans. Start a Twitter and add special offers for your Twitter followers.

These steps above ensure that you build your brand in the longer, drive a massive amount of traffic to your website, generate a ton of business leads and increase your revenue and sales and decrease your dependence of eBay and your eBay costs.

socialmediaexaminer.com has picked under over 570 nominations 20 Social Media Blogs for the Final Winner Selection.

One of those blogs is inBlurbs blog. In our blog we write about Inbound Internet Marketing – SEO, Blogging, Social Media, Landing Pages, Lead Generation and Analytics.

“Social Media Examiner, the world’s largest online social media magazine, is designed to help businesses discover how to best use social media tools like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with customers, generate more brand awareness and increase sales. More than 450,000 people read Social Media Examiner each month.

Technorati and AdAge rank Social Media Examiner as one of the world’s Top 10 business blogs. Our more than 120,000 email subscribers look forward to our daily original content.”

We are very proud to be nominated between those great blogs. Many thanks to all of our supporters.

Did you sometimes think about how would it be to increase revenue and profits by being much quicker with product and services development than your competition?

When was the last time you and your business have been ahead of the trend curve?

What would you do to have such a tremendous competitive advantage which enables you to produce products and to create services your buyers demand and want to buy, always and repeat this again and again?

Yes, you would appreciate this advantage and do all the best you can to profit from it. Who wouldn’t?

But the fact is that most businesses are not willing to go the extra mile to achieve this kind of long term success. They simple stay in their comfortable zone and think if they do not take advantage of any new opportunities or technologies than they lower their risks. But the opposite is the sad fact.

I know it, because these are information I have discovered from many conversations of which I had with businesses. These businesses will fail in the long term there is no question!

A small percentage of businesses are willing to go the extra mile and use new technologies and opportunities when they appear. These businesses will be the winner in the future for sure!

One important part of success is the ability to listen and learn!

If you are able to listen than you are able to learn and you will develop yourself and your business to the next higher profitable level.

When you listen to conversation you become aware of new information, technologies and what your recent and future customers think about you and your business.

1. Do you know and do you listen what recent and future customers think about you and your business?

2. Where do you listen?

3. Did you improved your support, developed products and services to solve the target audience demand yet?

If not than I give you some good reasons why you should do:

• In social media people discuss open about their needs and are willing to give more personal information [develop buyer personas to better identify your audience].

Good to know

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setup an inbound marketing strategy for you and help with broader
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